DH has just volunteered me to make his sister's only child's first birthday cake...

[Twiglett]

arrrgghhhh

Order one from local bakery and pass it off as all your own work.

have you no principles woman

ah - hence the teddy cake tin thread.....

I did a hickory dickory dock cake for DS1 first birthday - really easy and a spider for DS2 - equally easy

oo tommy do you know?? do you??

that's really flattering - evidently you are the earth mother, WI type of the family!

I'm afraid I have never used one of those tins - I prefer to sculpt my own masterpieces and then cover up the multitude of sins with chocolate butter icing.....

why oh why do you not just buy ones of thoses lovely teddy cakes from sainsburys? too much stress and hassle just so you can save face...

ahem, says me with ds 1st b'day just over & sainsburys teddy cake consumed here.

Do you have to make a special shaped one or could you make a square layered sponge cake. You could buy sugar animals and flowers to decorate the top and cut out her name in marzipan (what I did for dd's 1st).

for my kids I have made extremely home-made looking cakes .. using icing and sprinkles to fill in the bits that went wrong

I also knit my own spaghetti of course

Get a swiss roll and cover it in butter icing and then smarties and hey presto, a caterpillar! I haven't done this myself but a friend did it for ds's 3rd and v impressive it looked.

one year old and smarties .. do you think it would work with chocolate buttons??

sure - you could alternate brown buttons and white buttons (like stripes)and have 2 liquorice allsorts as eyes (you have to eat the rest of the packet)and little bits of liquorice or chocolate fingers or matchmakers for legs